How Product Managers & Developers Deliver Value at Avvo
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The document outlines insights from Danielle Martin, a Product Manager at Avvo, on the dynamics of agile teams, the role of product managers, and effective developer-manager relationships. Key topics include agile processes like sprints and backlog management, along with case studies demonstrating the importance of aligning user and business value in product development. Additionally, the document shares life and career tips for professionals to enhance their effectiveness in tech environments.
![Your PM will often say to you...
● Our goal/job is to deliver user value as fast as possible
● What’s the impact? (to user, to business, to developers)
● Is there a simpler way?
● Is there a faster way?
● Is there a benefit to doing this now vs. later?
● Draw me a picture
● Pros and cons? Considering those, which do you recommend?
● Are you blocked? Is there anything I can do to speed you up?
● Tell [stakeholder] to talk to me instead](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/codefellows-daniellemartin-feb20181-180402152509/85/How-Product-Managers-Developers-Deliver-Value-at-Avvo-34-320.jpg)
How Product Managers & Developers Deliver Value at Avvo
- 1. Who’s this person telling me what to do? Working with a Product Manager on an agile team Danielle Martin | Product Manager, Avvo | Code Fellows 2018
- 2. Danielle Martin Product Manager, Avvo Connect with me! Email: dmartin@avvo.com LinkedIn: /daniellempost/ Connect with Avvo! ● Jobs ● Meetups ● Mock interviews
- 4. Today I hope you learn... ● What’s an agile team and how do they work? ● What does a Product Manager do on an agile team? ● Successful Engineer : Product Manager relationships ● Life/career hacks ● Case studies ● Q&A
- 5. I’d love your feedback! https://tinyurl.com/yac9v26h
- 6. What’s Avvo?
- 7. Mission: To get people the legal help they deserve
- 8. For my users (attorneys): We help you grow your practice by connecting you with consumers looking for legal help.
- 10. What’s an Agile team? (my team at Avvo)
- 11. Agile is the fastest way to deliver value to customers. - Kevin Goldsmith, CTO, Avvo
- 12. My team
- 13. Teammates Product manager: Set and drive strategy based on user goals, business goals, and the fastest way to deliver user value. User experience (UX): For us, interaction design and content strategy. What info, when, and how - to achieve user goals and business goals. Quality Assurance (QA): First and last line of defense. Repro bugs, triage work, test new features. Engineers / Developers: Deliver business value by building stuff. On my team, we have data engineers, full-stack developers, front-end engineers. Business analyst: Uses data to find problems and communicate impact.
- 15. Attorney Journey Backlog Idea or pain point from users or the biz Learn Build Measure Prioritized Get feedback AJ discusses, questions, estimates Get feedback
- 16. Agile is the fastest way to deliver value to customers. - Kevin Goldsmith, CTO, Avvo
- 17. A “sprint” in the life (2 weeks)
- 18. Backlog grooming Who: Team Goal: Groom = shared understanding, get answers to open questions, estimate the level of effort
- 19. Sprint Planning Who: Team Goal: ● Sprint goals ● Answer questions ● Estimate work ● Commit to work (not dates) and get goin’
- 20. Daily standup Who: Team Goal: ● Yesterday I did... ● Today I’m doing… ● Blockers? Yes/No. ● Parking lot
- 21. Demo Who: Team Goal: Share! ● What you built ● Value you delivered ● Lessons learned
- 22. Retrospective Who: Team Goal: ● Keep doing ● Stop doing ● Ideas ● Props!
- 23. Questions?
- 24. What’s a Product Manager (PM)? (at Avvo)
- 25. Words*… Product manager (PM): Owns end-to-end product experience and is responsible for delivering user/biz value. Product owner (PO): Agile lingo. Same as product manager. Project manager (PM): Manages a defined project; usually not responsible for strategy. Program manager (PM): Manages a defined program; usually not responsible for strategy. *Words mean different things at different places, just ask them what they do.
- 28. Some things I care about a lot ● Solving real “people problems” for real humans, often in stress (Julie Zhuo & Sarah Wachter-Boettcher) ● Making sure everyone on my team knows why (Start with Why) ● Test & Learn, and share what you learned! (Agile, UX; If a tree falls…) ● Progress not perfection. Get value to users as fast as possible #impact (The Lean Startup) ● Protecting my team from confusion and randomization - often with a lil’ process to speed them up (Don’t Make Me Think)
- 29. If you’re going to build things that affect people's’ lives (you are), read these!! These are all linked
- 30. Questions?
- 32. What I expect from Product Managers ● Deeply understand your user and their problems/goals ● Understand your business and stakeholder problems/goals ● Balance the 2 to create strategy ● Clearly communicate strategy to many people, in many formats ● Break up work into small, clearly scoped chunks. ● Unblock & speed up the team - including shielding them from noise. ● “Be kind and curious” - Leslie Zavisca ● Deliver value and #GSD
- 33. What I expect from Developers ● Deliver user & business value !!! ● Ask questions (especially if you don’t understand why) ● Collaborate with others - diversity of ideas, healthy debate, hole-poking, before converging on a way forward ● Explore options, communicate pros/cons, recommend direction ● Don’t spin too long - raise your hand if slowed, confused, randomized ● “Be kind and curious” - Leslie Z. ● Practice communicating to non-tech folks (pictures!)
- 34. Your PM will often say to you... ● Our goal/job is to deliver user value as fast as possible ● What’s the impact? (to user, to business, to developers) ● Is there a simpler way? ● Is there a faster way? ● Is there a benefit to doing this now vs. later? ● Draw me a picture ● Pros and cons? Considering those, which do you recommend? ● Are you blocked? Is there anything I can do to speed you up? ● Tell [stakeholder] to talk to me instead
- 36. Written communication (teammates are not mind readers!) This week
- 37. What did Yana do? ● Estimated the work (1-2 story points) ● Reminded me of background “we did this once before” ● Shared code / how for dev teammates ● Gave multiple options & recommendation ● Asked a clarifying question ● Re-estimated based on my answer (2 points) So that her PM and Dev teammates do not have to read minds or waste time.
- 38. Life/career hacks (Things I wish I knew sooner)
- 39. Framework: People problem When: Someone brings you a problem or goal. Why: Don’t waste time/work/money. How: 1. What is the people problem? 2. How do we know it’s a real problem? (qualitative and quantitative data) 3. How will we know when we’ve solved it? Watch Julie Zhuo
- 40. Framework: PAR When: Anytime you’re talking about your work. Why: Tell the story of your work and why it matters. How: 1. Problem - what were you trying to solve? 2. Action - what action did you take? 3. Result - what was the result? What value did you deliver?
- 41. Feeling yucky is part of the process!
- 42. Questions?
- 44. Small
- 45. Problem to solve: As Avvo Marketing, I want attorneys to announce our attorney conference on the site. Action: PM/UX decides where it should go, Marketing delivers the asset, developers build it with an on/off switch - so we can ship it now, anyone can turn on later. Result: Built and shipped. PM flipped it on day-of email.
- 48. Medium
- 49. Problem to solve: As a consumer, I want a fast answer to my question. But as an attorney, it’s hard / slow to add Q&A subscriptions. Action: UX talks to Sales to understand the problem. UX & Developer design new interaction based on best-in-class / our UI toolkit capabilities. Result: Much easier to add subscriptions. But now it’s hard to unsubscribe! And some other stuff! Action: Iterate over 2 sprints.
- 51. New progressive reveal; checkboxes make it easy to add multiple counties
- 52. New “select all” makes it easy to unsubscribe after accidents
- 54. Problem to solve: As Avvo, we want a new product that has just 3 features of an existing 20+ feature product. Action: We took a route with some theoretical future side benefits. Then we hit surprises. Then we under-resourced the team. Then we hit more surprises. And we just...kept….going…. Result: We lost sight of business value, our pivots weren’t dramatic enough, people felt burned out. When we ultimately shipped, we broke the website - for a while. We shipped again, successfully. We learned some valuable lessons!
- 56. Our learnings (more life/career hacks) 1. Never lose sight of user / business value - say it early and often. 2. Build habit of pivot or persevere discussions - if estimates change, and at each sprint planning. Still a priority? New info? 3. Bring "change in scope" to team and PM asap 4. Ship each sprint – good for user/biz value and for morale. 5. Mentoring is great for mentees and mentors and teams! 6. Rotate teammates off of projects - promotes shared understanding, shared ownership over big decisions, and avoids burnout. 7. Legacy code was full of surprises and caused slowdowns (in momentum and morale). Try a tech debt template.
- 57. I hope you learned about... ● Agile teams ● Product Managers ● Successful Developer : Product Manager relationships ● Some life/career hacks ● Some real-life case studies ● Answers to your questions
- 58. Q&A
- 59. I’d love your feedback! https://tinyurl.com/yac9v26h
- 60. Danielle Martin ● Email: dmartin@avvo.com ● LinkedIn: /daniellempost/ Avvo jobs: avvo.com/about_avvo/jobs February 10th – She’s Coding Hackathon https://www.meetup.com/shescoding-seattle/events/245009290/ February 12 – JS Hackers - https://www.meetup.com/seattlejshackers/ February 15 – APIS and IPAs - https://www.meetup.com/seattle-api/ February 19 – JS Hackers - https://www.meetup.com/seattlejshackers/ February 20 – Elixir – https://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Elixir-Programming-Meetup/ February 21 – PuPPY - https://www.meetup.com/PSPPython/ February 26 – JS Hackers - https://www.meetup.com/seattlejshackers/ March 10th - She’s Coding Hackathon Part 2 & April 7th – She’s Coding Hackathon Final April 24th – Operation Code https://www.meetup.com/OperationCode-SeattleWA/ May 9th- FourBlock http://fourblock.org/